Welcome to the inaugural Core77 Design Awards! For the past 16 years we've been celebrating outstanding design and designers across a wide array of disciplines. Now we're proud to provide a global platform that honors the very brightest, boldest and most impactful work on an annual basis. We hope to set new standards for design awards by leveraging online scale, increasing transparency and decreasing plane fuel. We're opening the field to 15 categories, recognizing the emerging disciplines of Design for Social Impact, Design Education Initiatives, DIY and our intriguing "Never Saw the Light of Day." The submission process is online and allows designers the opportunity to show off their pitching skills by uploading a 2-minute-30-second video as part of their entry (it's optional but advisable).

Our jury system also gives the judging process a new twist. Rather than put each jury member on a plane and fly them to one location, we have selected a head judge for each of the categories (we call them "Jury Captains"). Based in different cities around the world, each captain will select four local experts (within train, bike or jogging distance) to join them in the evaluation process as a unified jury team. Not only that, these teams of jurors will reveal their winning choices via live web broadcasts. With jury teams in time zones as diverse as London, Tokyo, Sydney and Ahmenabad, we're looking forward to announcement parties at all hours of the day and night.

Meanwhile, the design team of Rich Brilliant Willing are hard at work making an award as innovative as the awards program itself. Thirty trophies will be awarded in total; one each of the Professional and Student winners of each category. Stay tuned to Core77 over the next two months as we document the evolution of this year's trophy!

So tell your friends, compile your materials and enter the work that you're proud of. We're ready and waiting!